Bronya
The steel doors to simulation Room 04 slowly hissed open.
A vast, grid-lined cube of white, it was a room scrubbed clean of all personality, all warmth, all life. It was a blank canvas, a clinical space designed for the pure, unbiased acquisition of data.
She led the way to the center of the room, her footsteps eerily silent. Kenji, by contrast, seemed to practically bounce beside her, his sneakers squeaking on the pristine floor. He seemed quite excited to spar with her.
"This is one of the high-end sims, right? Kinda surprised that I've never been in this one."
"Subject Kenji must have been in much more advanced simulation rooms in his special training sessions, so this one may not be that impressive." Bronya stated, trying to make him spill some information regarding his private training.
"I mean, I guess so? It was pretty cool at the start, but I kinda focused on the training part more as time went on." He grinned, backing away from her, rolling his shoulders to loosen up. "So, uh, how do we start? You gonna... call Project Bunny?"
Bronya did not answer. She simply closed her eyes for a half-second, accessing her systems. Her internal HUD flared to life, a cool, blue overlay settling over her vision. In the left corner of her sight, Kenji was instantly framed by a tactical reticle.
[SUBJECT: AOYAMA, KENJI][STATUS: HIGH-COMPLIANCE. LOW-AGITATION]
[VITAL SIGNS: HEART-RATE (ELEVATED: 110BPM). ADRENALINE (HIGH)]
[CROSS-REFERENCE: DATA LOG 042-B. ENERGY SIGNATURE (RESTING) VS (COMBAT). PREDICTION: VOLATILE]
[PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE: EAGER]
She was observing a data set, and a highly unpredictable one at that. Her mission with Kiana and Mei had only provided a glimpse of his output, and the tracker only provided limited data—this test was designed to analyse it in action with more precision.
With an outstretched hand, she opened the dimensional channel. It was not a subtle summoning. The air in front of her tore open with the sound of a high-frequency blade, a rift of black, pixelated space ripping into the sterile white room. From this void, Project Bunny 19C emerged, its heavy, dark-metal chassis assembling itself with a series of sharp, percussive thuds that echoed like cannon fire.
It settled into a low hover beside her, its heavy armor plating shifting with micro-adjustments. It shifted its head towards Kenji, its attention fully focused on him. The hum of its active Honkai-reactor was a low, base vibration that seemed to suck the warmth from the air, instantly dropping the room's temperature by several degrees.
Kenji's eyes sharpened, an excited grin slowly creeping onto his face. "I have to admit… It's a lot cooler up close."
He settled into his stance, a light, bouncing footwork that was both relaxed and ready. He was not intimidated in the slightest.
[SUBJECT: UNCONCERNED. THREAT-ASSESSMENT: POOR.]
An interesting, if foolish, variable. Bronya's own thrusters activated with a near-silent hiss, lifting her a foot off the ground. She was now in her element: mobile, airborne, and at a safe, analytical distance.
Her gaze was clinical, her aim steady. She sent the first command script to her partner.
[PB-19C: UPLOAD. SCRIPT_01 (DEFEND/INTERCEPT)]
[OBJECTIVE: GAUGE SUBJECT'S MAX-VELOCITY EVASION AND CQC-PROBE RESPONSE]
[CQC SUBROUTINE: 'SCYTHE' (BLADE-SWEEP) ON STANDBY]
Project Bunny's "eye" flashed once, acknowledging the command.
An automated, feminine voice echoed from the walls.
[SIMULATION COMMENCING. TEST PARAMETERS: UNRESTRICTED CQC. INITIATING IN 3…]
Bronya's own arm-mounted cannon clicked as it powered on, a low, ominous whine building in its core.
[2…]
Kenji's grin never left, but the air around his fists began to crackle with a faint, red energy.
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: DETECTED. LEVEL: NOMINAL. MONITORING...]
[1…]
'Commence data acquisition.'
The automated voice was still echoing when Kenji moved.
There was no preliminary step, no gradual acceleration. He simply exploded from his starting position. The white, grid-lined floor cracked under the force of his departure as he became a red comet, aiming not for Project Bunny, but straight for the Bronya herself.
[SUBJECT VELOCITY: 48M/S. RE-CALCULATING...]
The internal alert flashed, but Bronya's plan had already accounted for this. His tactics were simplistic. A CQC specialist will always try to neutralize the ranged opponent first.
'Predictable.'
Bronya's thrusters fired, pushing her back and up, a smooth, kiting maneuver designed to maintain optimal distance. Simultaneously, she issued her first command.
[PB-19C: INTERCEPT. EXECUTE: SCRIPT_01 (SCYTHE).]
Project Bunny moved with a deceptive, frictionless speed. It slid between Bronya and the incoming target, its right arm blurring. The heavy armored plating reshaped itself, extending into a massive, ten-foot scythe of special reinforced steel. The mech swung the blade in a low, horizontal arc designed to sever its target at the waist.
Kenji didn't slow down. He dropped into a slide, the deadly blade hissing through the air just inches above his head. The gust from its passage tore at his hair. He popped back to his feet, having lost no momentum, and immediately launched a right hook at Project Bunny's "head."
[PB-19C: SHIELD. REROUTE: POWER (ARMOR).]
His fist connected with a sound like a car crash. The mech didn't budge, but Bronya's HUD registered a significant, localized impact force.
[IMPACT FORCE: 14,000N. RE-CALCULATING...]
[TEST 1: SUCCESSFUL. CQC-SUBROUTINE: 'SCYTHE' IS VIABLE. SUBJECT IS... FRUSTRATED.]
She was correct. Kenji recoiled, shaking his hand, his grin vanishing into a frustrated grimace. He had just punched a block of solid, Honkai-infused steel. Though she suspected the only reason it somewhat hurt him was because of his low output.
'He is still holding back substantial amounts of power. Calculating from previous analysis… Current power level should be around 10-15 percent.'
"Okay," he muttered, flexing his fingers. "So that's how it's gonna be."
He dashed right, this time trying to get around the mech. Bronya was ready. Her own arm cannon, now fully charged, fired a precise, blue-white beam of energy at his flank.
It was a herding maneuver. The shot was perfectly placed to force him to halt his advance or leap directly right.
He chose right—just as she'd predicted.
[PB-19C: EXECUTE: 'HEAVY SLAM'.]
Project Bunny had already moved. Its heavy left arm, which had been tracking his movement, now came down in a crushing, vertical slam at the exact grid coordinate where he was predicted to land.
It was a perfect, two-on-one pincer. And it should have worked.
The anomaly occurred in 0.8 seconds. Just as Kenji's feet were about to touch the floor, just as he was locked into his trajectory, his entire body twisted in mid-air with impossible, unnatural force.
He hadn't seen the attack; Project Bunny was in his blind spot. He hadn't had time to analyze the trap. He simply reacted to a threat that had not yet landed.
He contorted, focusing power onto his leg to kick the air with force, breaking his own momentum and shoving him three meters to the left.
Project Bunny's fist struck an empty white grid square. The resulting shockwave cracked the floor in a ten-foot radius, but the target was already gone.
Bronya processed the data instantly. He was as fast as her calculations predicted, she even accounted for the amount of output he would usually use. But it wasn't just his speed. It was his timing.
Her internal analysis reran the engagement. [SUBJECT INITIATED DODGE 0.7 SECONDS BEFORE VISUAL CONFIRMATION OF 'HEAVY SLAM'] It wasn't just fast. It was precognitive.
"Nice one!" his voice called out. He was already moving again, running around Project Bunny who never left its "eyes" on him. He was a close quarters specialist, and he was now treating this as a puzzle, how to bypass the indestructible guard dog.
"Data is insufficient," Bronya murmured. She needed more. "Execute: 'PINCER'," she commanded, both to herself and her mech.
This was a more complex test. She began firing her own cannon in a rapid, three-shot burst, forcing him to weave and dodge. Her aim was perfect, tracking his movements, forcing him into a predictable dodging pattern.
He was fast, but his evasions were becoming rhythmic.
'Now.'
On his third dodge, as he moved left, she timed her masterstroke. She fired a heavy, charged blast from her cannon—a slow-moving, high-impact projectile he would have to dodge. Simultaneously, [PB-19C: EXECUTE: 'DRILL-THRUST'.] Project Bunny, flanking his blind right side, rotated its arm into a high-RPM drill and lunged.
It was the perfect trap. If he dodged her cannon blast by leaping right, he would impale himself directly on the drill. If he stopped to block the drill, her cannon blast would hit him full-force. He had no line of sight on the drill. He had 0.4 seconds to make a choice.
Kenji did neither. A full half-second before her cannon had even finished charging, before Project Bunny had even begun its lunge, his entire body went rigid. His head snapped to the right, staring at the empty air where the drill was about to be.
Bronya's own heart skipped a beat. [ALERT. SUBJECT AWARENESS—]
But she didn't have time to analyze her thoughts as Kenji jumped straight up, directly into the air. Her cannon blast shot harmlessly under his feet. Project Bunny's drill thrust stabbed into empty, white-gridded air.
He was now airborne, then she saw him form his hands into a flicking motion and released gusts of air targeted towards her and Project Bunny.
Project Bunny successfully dodged the gust of air, but when she was about to maneuver away, she realized too late that the attack targeted towards her was much larger, and she was flung back a couple feet.
Kenji would have continued his assault if not for Project Bunny charging straight at him with scythe mode. Forcing Kenji to flick again, creating a gust of air that allowed him to dodge, and Project Bunny quickly shot at him with the scythe now formed into a cannon. Which he infuriatedly dodged with a side step.
Bronya was getting annoyed. He wasn't just "fast." He wasn't just "strong." He was, in some fundamental, data-corrupting way, cheating.
The annoyance was a foreign, unwelcome static in Bronya's processing. Her entire strategy was predicated on predictable outcomes. Kenji's "cheating" rendered her superior analytics useless.
'No. It isn't just cheating… There is something different about him, a variable that had been altered or added in.' It was time for a change of plans
If the subject would not conform to the test, then the test would be escalated to match the subject. Her analytical mind, honed in the snows of Siberia, was not just a tool for observation; it was a weapon. And it was competitive.
She changed her stance mid-air, her thrusters flaring. "Data collection is insufficient. Subject Kenji is not operating at full capacity. Initiating: Phase 2."
Kenji, who had just landed, looked up, that infuriatingly easy-going grin still on his face. "Phase 2? Does that mean you're finally gonna get serious?"
Bronya did not give a verbal response, but she did feel a spike of irritation at his goading.
[PB-19C: EXECUTE: 'GRAVITY VORTEX'.]
[CANNON: CHARGE. TARGET: VORTEX EPICENTER.]
Project Bunny's heavy arms slammed together. The air in the center of the room instantly warped, a visible distortion that became a powerful gravitational well, pulling at everything.
Kenji's light, bouncing footwork was instantly nullified. He was dragged, skidding, across the white floor, pulled inexorably toward the mech.
This was her checkmate. His prediction ability was useless if his body was physically unable to obey his commands to dodge.
Kenji's grin vanished. He dug his heels in, the floor groaning, but the pull was too strong. He was being reeled in like a fish. "Whoa—okay, that's new!"
He was ten feet from the mech when he acted. He didn't fight the pull, but instead used it. He crouched, the energy in his legs becoming more pronounced as he jumped high.
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: DETECTED. LEVEL: 25%]
The resulting explosion was not an attack, but a propulsion. The force of the blast against the floor, combined with the vortex's pull, shot him forward and up, launching him like a cannonball in an arc over Project Bunny's head.
He had once again broken her prediction. But this time, she was ready for it.
The moment he left the ground, her own internal monologue was no longer a cold script. She merely followed her instincts.
Her arm cannon, which had been patiently aimed at the vortex's center, snapped up. She didn't calculate his trajectory. She felt it. A beam of pure, blue-white energy lanced across the room, aimed perfectly at his airborne, vulnerable body.
He twisted in mid-air, contorting his body. The beam seared past his chest, missing him by a centimeter. But it had been a feint.
[PB-19C: EXECUTE: 'CLUSTER-SWARM']
Project Bunny, now directly below the airborne Kenji, pivoted. Its armored back plating opened, revealing a dozen micro-missiles. They launched like a swarm of angry hornets.
It was a perfect, inescapable trap. He was airborne. He had no leverage. His precognitive dodges were useless.
This time, he didn't dodge. "Not this time!" He cupped his hands and slammed them together, creating a focused shockwave that exploded downward. The force of his attack met the missiles head-on.
The resulting mid-air explosion was deafening. It filled the white room with a blinding flash of red and orange, the concussive force slamming Bronya back a few feet and peppering Project Bunny with shrapnel.
[ALERT. ALERT. HUD-OVERLOAD. SENSORS: OFFLINE] Her tactical overlay dissolved into a sea of error messages and static. She was blind.
Her thrusters fired on instinct, pushing her back as Kenji dropped from the smoke, landing in a perfect crouch. He was breathing hard, his crimson energy now coiling around his arms. The fight had changed. The data-gathering "test" was over. This was now just a fight.
And she felt herself slowly losing herself in it.
"Alright, Bronya-chan!" She gave him a disgusted look. "Not a fan huh? Then I'll stick to Bronya!"
"My turn!" He rocketed toward her. Project Bunny moved to intercept, its scythe-arm raised. "Don't think so!" Kenji slid under the arm, slammed his red-glowing palm onto the mech's bottom and pushed it hard. The concussive blast blew the multi-ton mech off-balance.
Bronya's analytical mind was gone, replaced by the pure, honed instincts of a warrior. Her HUD was dead. Her predictions were useless.
All she had was her skill. She fired her cannon. He dodged. She commanded Project Bunny to slam its fist. He used the arm as a ramp, running up it. He was airborne, aiming a kick at her. She dropped, her thrusters firing, letting him fly over her, and fired a blast at his back. He kicked the air, the crimson force-blast neutralizing her shot and propelling him to the far wall.
It was a dance. A high-speed, chaotic, and utterly brilliant dance. And in this dance, Kenji was her partner.
He was anticipating her moves just as she was anticipating his. Slowly, the original purpose of collecting data started to disappear from her mind, overshadowed by her competitive pride. His "cheating" was no longer frustrating, it was a challenge, a new variable that forced her to adapt, to be better.
He landed, grinning, "C'mon! I'm not even at twenty percent!" The taunt worked. A new command script, one she hadn't planned on using, one designed for high-level Honkai beasts, unlocked in her mind.
[EXECUTE: OVERDRIVE. PB-19C. CQC SUBROUTINE: 'BERSERKER']
Project Bunny's crimson eye flared. Its arms reconfigured, blades snapping from its fists, its reactor hum climbing to a screech.
"Now," Bronya murmured, and she could feel the unfamiliar, electric tingle at the corners of her own mouth. "The test begins." She launched forward, Project Bunny flanking her, a perfect, two-pronged assault. Kenji's answering laugh was pure, unadulterated joy as he charged to meet them.
It was only then, as she prepared to fire a perfectly timed, instinctual shot to sync with her mech's lunge, that she realized the anomaly. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. Her breath was short. And she was smiling. The realization was so jarring it stopped her in her tracks.
[ERROR: ANOMALY DETECTED. PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE: COMPROMISED]
Her finger froze on the trigger. Her shot went wide. Project Bunny's attack, no longer synced, was easily dodged. The entire, perfect, high-speed dance ground to a halt. She hovered, her cannon lowered, her mind a sudden, frozen sea of conflicting data. Kenji skidded to a stop, his own crimson energy fading.
"Bronya? You okay? Why'd you stop?"
/ — /
Bronya hovered, motionless. Her cannon arm felt impossibly heavy. The simulation room that had been a blur of attacks like a brilliant dance, was now just a white, sterile box again.
Her HUD was still flashing the same, insistent error message. [ERROR: ANOMALY DETECTED. PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE: COMPROMISED]
She was compromised. The mission was compromised. The realization felt like a bucket of ice water that instantly extinguished the strange warmth in her chest.
The smile, which had felt so natural, so real, now felt like a grotesque failure. A betrayal. She forcefully purged the error message, her expression resetting to its default, neutral mask. Her thrusters cut out with a soft hiss. Her feet touched the grid-lined floor with a faint thud.
"Data acquisition is complete," she stated, her voice flat and perfectly devoid of the emotion she had felt moments before. "Test parameters have been met." She raised her hand and spoke a single clipped command to the empty room. "End simulation."
Kenji, who was still in a low combat stance, blinked in confusion. "Wait, what? Just like that? But we were just getting to the best part!"
Bronya ignored him. She turned her back to him, her gaze fixed on Project Bunny. [PB-19C: DISENGAGE. RETURN TO STORAGE.] The mech's glow dimmed. Its reactor spun down, the high-pitched whine fading into silence.
The blades on its arms retracted with a series of sharp, mechanical clicks. It hovered for a second, then dissolved into a cascade of black pixels, its dimensional rift sealing behind it with a sound like a closing vault.
"Bronya...?" Kenji's voice was softer now, all the fight gone from it, replaced by genuine concern. "Seriously, are you good?"
"Negative," Bronya said, not turning around. She was recalibrating. The physical test had failed, or rather, it had succeeded in all the wrong ways. It provided no logical data, only more anomalies. The mission was not over. Phase 3—verbal intelligence gathering—needed to be started.
She finally turned to face him. He was still flushed with exertion, his crimson energy fully dissipated. He just looked like a confused, slightly tired boy. A 'variable' that had 'compromised' her.
"The spar was... informative," She began to walk toward the exit, expecting him to follow. He did, falling into step beside her, toweling sweat from his hair.
"Informative? I guess that's one way to call it… But I have to admit, your robot is insane! That gravity-pull thing? Where did that come from? It seems kind OP to be able to control gravity—"
Bronya let him ramble on for a moment, letting him get it out of his system. "Your evasive maneuvers were unexpected," Bronya cut him off. Kenji's excited ramble came to an abrupt halt.
"Unexpected? I guess I've been getting better lately—"
"That is not what I meant."
She stopped walking, turning to face him fully in the stark white hallway just outside the sim room. "They were illogical. The data from the 'PINCER' and 'DRILL-THRUST' protocols is incomplete."
"Incomplete? What is that supposed to mean?"
"The Bronya's calculations were precise," she stated, making sure to pay close attention to his expressions. "In both instances, the pincer attacks were executed in your sensory blind spots. You had no visual or auditory data to correlate. Yet, the logs show you initiated a full, evasive dodge an average of 0.7 seconds before the attacks were even launched."
She took a small step closer, increasing the pressure on the increasingly nervous Kenji. "This is akin to precognition," she said. "A level of predictive capability that should be impossible. Explain the mechanism."
Kenji just stared at her. Bronya watched him, her primary objective now in sharp focus. His eyes darted to the side for a millisecond. His heart rate, which had been leveling out, spiked by 15BPM. He was nervous. He was hiding something.
"Oh... that," he said, and he forced a small, awkward laugh. "Yeah, I thought I already told you and everyone about my... weird thing."
"Define 'weird thing'," Bronya pressed. "I... I don't really know how?" He rubbed the back of his neck, a classic tell of deception. "It's... just a feeling. You know? Like, a tingling in my head. Right before something bad is about to happen."
Bronya raised an eyebrow, her brain already trying to process what he said. A tingling in his head before an attack is still vague, but it gave her a broad idea.
"Are you perhaps able to predict the actions of others or see the future?" It was best for her to exaggerate her questions, previous conversations with Kenji showed that he did not like having his abilities overestimated.
He was sure to correct her question and even if he won't give a straight answer, it would be enough to lead her to a conclusion of some sort.
"No, absolutely nothing like that… Let's just say that every time there is something dangerous that's near me and wants to harm me, I will get a tingling feeling that will alert me of their presence."
Bronya stared at him for a full ten seconds. This was her report. This was the "data" Cocolia was waiting for. While she had failed in this mission by many accounts, she still had plenty of opportunities to try again.
The hard data she did collect was useless without this central, ridiculous, illogical piece of the puzzle.
"Understood… That is… quite a useful ability."
"I guess it is."
Neither said anything after that, so Bronya took this as a sign to head back to the dorm but she only took a few steps before she stopped herself.
"Kenji… Thank you for your assistance today."
He merely waved her off, "Don't mention it, we're a team after all. You can ask me for help whenever."
His words made Bronya linger for a moment, but she quickly recovered and headed back to the dorms.